One of the facts that has come out of the U.S. Attorney purge scandal is that the White House has been using email accounts set up by the Republican National Committee to avoid official records being kept in the White House email systems. This also, however, has undermined White House attempts to claim that these are privileged internal communications. Now, however, the RNC says that it has accidentally lost “an undetermined number of emails concerning White House business." Oops. (Via Talking Points Memo.) UPDATE (April 12, 2007): Dan Froomkin points out how the White House staff must have known that they were violating federal law and White House policy by using RNC email accounts and deleting emails.

Bruce Flamm points out that another reason to doubt the authors of the dubious Journal of Reproductive Medicine prayer study has surfaced, with one of them being charged with plagiarism: In summary, the man who designed and supposedly conducted the prayer study resides in federal prison, and the man originally listed as lead author admits he knows nothing about the alleged research. The only remaining author has now been charged with plagiarism. . . This may be the first time in history that all three authors of a randomized, controlled study have been found guilty of fraud, deception, and/or plagiarism. Even more remarkable is the fact that the JRM has steadfastly refused to retract its physics-defying paper.Taner Edis has more at the Secular Outpost.

Scott Adams’ lame arguments for copyright are taken apart by Kevin Carson at the Mutualist Blog. There are good arguments to be made for some form of copyright protection, but Adams doesn’t make them. I guess it’s not just the subject of evolution where Adams goes off the rails. Historical Comments Kevin Carson (2007-04-11): Thanks, Jim.

This video shows U.S. inflation-adjusted home prices from 1890 to present, as a roller coaster ride. Gee, I wonder what the next piece of the ride will look like? (Via Catallarchy.)

The series “America at a Crossroads” commissioned a series of films about Islam in America that will air next week. One of the films, “Islam v. Islamists: Voices From the Muslim Center,” by Martyn Burke, will not be shown. Burke, who was previously the producer of “Pirates of Silicon Valley” and “The Hollywood Ten,” says that his film was dropped for political reasons (including the fact that two of his co-producers, Frank Gaffney and Alex Alexiev, are neoconservatives from the Center for Security Policy) after “tampering” by PBS and managers from WETA Washington D.C. He listed these examples of tampering: • A WETA manager pressed to eliminate a key perspective of the film: The claim that Muslim radicals are pushing to establish “parallel societies” in America and Europe governed by Shariah law rather than sectarian courts. • After grants were issued, Crossroads managers commissioned a new film that overlapped with Islam vs. Islamists and competed for the same interview subjects. • WETA appointed an advisory board that includes Aminah Beverly McCloud, director of World Islamic Studies at DePaul University. In an “unparalleled breach of ethics,” Burke says, McCloud took rough-cut segments of the film and showed them to Nation of Islam officials, who are a subject of the documentary. They threatened to sue.PBS claims that Burke’s film was not completed on time, had “serious structural problems” and was “irresponsible” and “alarmist, and it wasn’t fair." Burke’s film featured Phoenix medical doctor Zuhdi Jasser, head of the Islamic Forum for Democracy, a non-profit that advocates “patriotism, constitutional democracy, and a separation of church and state.” Jasser, a staunch Republican and former U.S. Navy physician, was an internist at the Office of the Attending Physician at the U.S. Capitol in the late nineties. There are more details and a short clip of Jasser from the film at the Arizona Republic (from which the above bulleted points are quoted). ...

Via Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog, here’s video of Geraldo Rivera arguing with Bill O’Reilly about illegal immigration. Geraldo does a great job of actually getting his points out on O’Reilly’s show, though he has to raise his voice to do it. I agree with Geraldo, pointing out that this move of attacking illegal immigration because of some other problem (in this case, drunk driving) is a deceptive way of arguing against illegal immigration, unless there is some evidence that illegal immigrants as a group create more of the problem than other people.

See the persuasive video, “Unfastened Coins,” at the Official Website of the Titanic Truth Movement. (Hat tip: Andrew Ramsey.)

On Sunday morning I received a phone call from my father informing me that my grandmother had died. By Monday morning, the funeral arrangements had been made, and my sisters and I booked our flights to Indianapolis. My grandmother’s obituary in the Indianapolis Star reported some facts and statistics of her life–born April 19, 1919 in Indianapolis (not, as I had always thought, in Rotterdam, Netherlands, where her older sister had been born), died April 1, 2007. She had worked in the Neurology Department at Indiana University Medical Center. She had been an active member of Clermont Christian Church since the mid-1940s, and married to my grandfather, who survives her, for nearly 69 years. Her brother Ernie, a Pearl Harbor survivor, also survives her. What the obituary didn’t express was the love that she had for her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and how, as my cousin Aaron said at the funeral service, she always focused her attention on others and made us feel special. The visitation at the funeral home and the funeral service was attended by hundreds of people, including many relatives I didn’t even know I had. What was a time of loss also became a reunion of family members from across the country, that I’m sure my grandmother would have been overjoyed to see. We’ll all miss her. ...

In the July/August 1988 issue of The Arizona Skeptic, I wrote an article called “A Visit to the ‘Psychic Showcase.’” This article was about my visit in April 1988 to a psychic fair put on by “Truth Investigations Unlimited” at the Biltmore Commerce Center in Phoenix. In that article, I reported on a demonstration of “mind transference techniques” by Phoenix magician Lee Earle (who began by stating “I have been accused of being a fake, a fraud, a phony, and a cheat”), channeling of “Equinox” by Joan Scibienski, a UFO lecture by Brian Myers and Tina Choate of the Center for UFO Research, and a talk by Jerry Wills. Here’s the portion of the article about Jerry Wills: ...

The count for March’s Notices of Trustee’s Sales in Maricopa County was 1720. Not a record beater, but certainly within sight of the summit. MC Trustee’s Sale Notices (1995-Present)Mean929.5Median819Mode746Standard Deviation306.2041743Range1256Minimum482Maximum1738Sum135705Count146 The daily average in March (78.18 Notices recorded per day) was also not a record beater. <img style=“display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src="/images/DailyAvgMar07.jpg" border=“0” alt=“Click for full-sized image"id=“BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048174691379040498” /> Here’s an interesting chart I threw together based on sales data I pulled from the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service. The take-away from it is that, clearly, the inventory of unsold homes in the Phoenix area has been increasing for quite a while, now. The words “downward pressure” come to mind. <img style=“display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src="/images/listingsales.jpg” border=“0” alt=““id=“BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048176301991776514” /> ...